The Journey Day 1

The Journey, Day 1 - Dublin, Ireland

Early morning after long night on plane. I managed to catch some zzz, but not enough! Cloudy, rainy, cool. Just like I pictured. Made it through customs and airport fine. Had to buy a leap card. Took bus to meet airbnb host. Arrived 50 minutes early and had to wait. A bit more waiting at airbnb before we could put our stuff down. Our airbnb apartment is right on the river at Usher's Quay. Our room doesn't face the river, but it has it's own bathroom!

The host, recommended that we eat at Wuff for brunch. We only managed to get a bit lost. There was a wait for a table, but it was worth it. Wuff is a cafe that is average sized. They fit in a lot of chairs and tables. It was packed tight. I had my first Irish breakfast!!! So yummy! I am not too sure about the pudding yet, but I will give it ago later. The baked beans tasted very sweet. I don't usually eat baked beans, so I'm not sure how sweet they should be, but I thought they were sweeter than normal. Overall it was a great breakfast!

Came back to room for a cat nap, I only allowed a one hour nap. A short nap can help with jet lag, but a long one will make it take longer to adjust. 

After that we walked down towards The Duke, because when I researched things to do in Dublin, the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl was listed. I was of course interested in both the literary history of Dublin and also the pubs. So doing a literary pub crawl seemed perfect. 

First Guinness in Ireland

We decided to take a little longer route in order to have a look at some sites. We passed St. Augustine church. We went inside. It has beautiful arches and stain glass windows. Loved it! Then, we kept walking passing Christ's Church and other sites, that we will visit on another day. 

After that we got a little turned around on Grafton Street, but a nice girl saw us turning in circles and stopped to help! At least we had a good tour of the area. 

When we arrived at The Duke we found out that the literary pub crawl was full. The problem was that there was a college football game in town between Boston College and Georgia Tech. So there were many students and parents in town for the game. So not only were they booked Saturday, but Sunday as well so  we called booked for Monday, then we booked the The Cliffs for Sunday. After that we stayed at The Duke for our first Guiness in Ireland.

The Duke is a bar that dates back to 1820s. Many literary writes like Joyce and Kavanagah visited. There are two floors, we went up stairs to the second floor. There was college football games on there, but not the Boston College and Georgia Tech game. 

We took our time with our first Guiness, but eventually we wandered out and made our way towards Trinity college. On the way we scoped out where we needed to meet the next day, for the cliffs tour. It was kind of on the way. Because of this, we past by not only the entrance to Trinity College, but we went down the Pearse Street. From that side it doesn't look like there is a good way to get inside the college, though in the following days we did exit the Science Gallery onto that street. So we probably could have gone in from the Science Gallery, we just didn't know it. We ended up walking around the college, towards the sea until we reached the Grand Canal. It was almost night by that time, and with the cloudy sky it was pretty much dark. Growing up in Arizona, any sort of water, looks quite pretty so of course we liked the view. 

Picture from our table at H Bar, before we went inside.

We had dinner at the H Bar. We wanted to eat outside, however we sat out there for a while without getting service. It was much faster inside. I had fish and chips while Kelsi had pizza, we both had another Guiness of course. The Fish and chips were good, but the fish is plainer than the fish fry in Arizona. I think the fish is saltier in Arizona. Nonetheless, it was a good dinner. I am not sure how Kelsi liked her pizza, but later in the trip she says that certain pizza's are her favorite so far. So I'm not sure this one was all that good. 

Afterwards dinner, we walked to the river because we determined that once we were at the river we could just walk down it, and eventually we would get back to our room. The walk along the river was beautiful. The bridges are cute, and there were many restaurants and bars along the way. We took our time, but we wanted to get back to our room. We were tried from traveling, and we had to be up early in the morning. Tomorrow the Cliffs!